The Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) is an umbrella organization that administers and scaffolds summer undergraduate research opportunities within UCLA Samueli. We currently coordinate several programs, including the Future of Semiconductors, Functional Nanomaterials, Engineering Faculty Lab REU Supplement, and the Electrical & Computer Engineering Fast Track to Success Summer Scholars Program. The program is now fully in-person.

The UCLA Integrated Sensors Laboratory (ISL) started collaborating with SURP in the Summer of 2024. Through 10 rigorous weeks of intense learning and research, undergraduate students experience firsthand the hands-on, cutting-edge research ongoing in ISL. They learn the basics of circuit theory and transmission lines, as well as signal propagation in air and guided media. The summer internship at ISL equips the interns with the background knowledge and the required safety training to handle sensitive equipment such as mm-Wave sources, arbitrary waveform generators (AWG), spectrum analyzers (SA), and VDI spectrum analyzer extenders (SAX) and perform wireline and over-the-air (OTA) measurements for their data collection. This experience assists the interns in successful completion of their undergraduate degree and gives them a flavor of the state-of-the-art research in the field.

SURP 2025

Non-contact Vital Sensing: Investigating Biomedical Capabilities of Silicon Terahertz Technologies

The Terahertz (THz) frequency band offers unique advantages for high-resolution sensing and imaging due to its non-ionizing nature and sensitivity to molecular composition. This research presents a versatile free-space THz system built from a core set of components, demonstrating its capability in two distinct configurations: high-precision non-contact displacement measurement and material characterization of aqueous solutions. Based on a 400 GHz transmitter and receiver, the system was used in two configurations. For vibrometry, it was arranged as a Michelson interferometer, where a split THz beam’s interference pattern measures target displacement. To determine the system’s performance, a simulation model was calibrated using initial experimental data. For material characterization, the setup was reconfigured into a focused-beam reflectometer by removing the reference arm. The beam was focused directly onto a sample, and the reflected power was measured across a range of frequencies to analyze its
properties.

The interferometric configuration proved highly effective for signal reconstruction. The calibrated simulation showed a displacement resolution of 1 µm or better, limited primarily by the receiver’s noise floor. This model also successfully simulated the reconstruction of periodic waveforms, such as pure tones and human heartbeat patterns. In the reflectometer configuration, the system successfully differentiated between several samples, including water, oil, saline, and glucose solutions. These materials each exhibited unique, frequency-dependent reflective signatures across the 370-430 GHz band, enabling their identification. Furthermore, the system demonstrated sensitivity to dissolved solutes, clearly distinguishing a 1 M glucose solution from pure water based on the reflected power, confirming its potential for concentration sensing.

SURP 2024

Automation of sub-THz & mm-Wave Measurement Setups: A Case Study

Achieving higher data transmission speeds in wireless communication necessitates the use of elevated carrier frequencies, such as those in the sub-THz/mm-wave range. However, power attenuation at these frequencies, primarily due to free-space path loss. presents significant challenges to maintaining energy-efficient transmission, making power optimization critical. One major hurdle at this frequency scale is the inherent variability in the output frequency and power of transmission chips. This variability, driven by high environmental sensitivity, causes subtle day-to-day fluctuations in chip behavior. Testing and optimizing chip transmission traditionally requires a labor-intensive manual calibration process, where researchers sweep through various bias voltage ranges and analyze the resulting output to identify critical voltage values. Our research seeks to automate this calibration process by developing a MATLAB application that controls a custom-designed board capable of autonomously sweeping voltages and interfacing with relevant instruments for real-time data acquisition. This automation significantly improves calibration efficiency and accuracy, paving the way for more reliable and comfortable chip performance benchmarking.